Monday, October 17, 2011

Chemistry ReflectionIn the video Bill Nye: 100 greatest discoveries: Chemistry 1/3 Bill, The speaker, talked about 3 of the greatest discoveries that helped push man-kind in the direction of understanding chemistry and what makes us and the objects around us up. One of the greatest discoveries was of oxygen itself. It proved that there were gasses all around us. One that went along with this was the discovery that everything was not just a single atom, as thought before, but many molecules. This made it possible to believe that combining them was in the human race's grasp. But it was still nothing more then a possibility. Until a scientist left to chemicals out by accident and when the chemicals where pulled out they had formed crystals that were familiar to him. Both ingredients that created the crystals were inorganic, meaning they came from not living things. He studied the crystals and realized it was a substance that he had created, or found once before inside the kidney of animals. He was the first to show that it was possible to make organic material out of inorganic things. Another intelligent man created a chart that could be used to categorize the molecules and show what they could and could not combine with. He did this with all the molecules but one. Benzene. No one could figure out how to draw or the chemical structure of this Molecule. Until a man fell asleep thinking of a solution to this problem. He dreamed of a snake, eating his own tale. He awoke and figured it out. This molecule actually looped. Later it was confirmed.